What Does It Mean to 'Form Your Own Pack?'

I believe one thing: Entrepreneurs Change the World.

Not bureaucrats. Not politicians. Not activists. Not naysayers and definitely not critics.

Creators, makers, doers.

Entrepreneurship is the ultimate scrappy, creative endeavor measured by tangible rewards.

Entrepreneurship however can be a lonely game. So what to do about this?

I started writing my second book Form Your Own Pack in the days following the lockdown of the universe in March 2020. Days before my first ever planned Founders Pack in person event with 150 people -- canceled! due to concerns over the ‘great plague of the new century.’

I had the idea for a while to write about & to learn from a forgotten Japanese business model- the Keiretsu in order to build a generation of great businesses.

The Keiretsu is a conglomerate model with some characteristics that I found attractive. Many companies across multiple verticals collaborate in good times and bad for mutual benefit. You know some of these Keiretsu by the names Mitsubishi, Matsushita (Panasonic), Mitsui and Sumitomo.

The good parts of this model of cooperative ventures I wanted to share and understand

• Cross Shareholdings

• Shared Management Experience

• Shared Engineering Talent

• Lunch Club→ Friday collaborative meetings between leaders

• Access to markets and resources gained by Trading Companies

• Internal access to capital via banks and real estate holding

On the Dark side of Kereitsu: lack of freedom over innovation, margins, the sacrifice of individual talents, creativity and careers for tradition and formality. The bureaucracy.

Instead I propose the following;

Take the best lessons of the Keiretsu, validated against examples from business, entertainment, sports of collaborative and creative individuals pursuing their own ends, while supporting one another.

Apply digital tools and entrepreneurial sensibilities. Use smaller groups with technologies that enable us to leverage the same benefits of a Keiretsu.

Encourage and attract the type of people I would want to head into a new era and build great things with.

Founders. Entrepreneurs.

As the owner of a baby wolf, aka a husky, I was further inspired to suggest how to apply these lessons and use tools to do this great next thing. Rather than using large bureaucratic groups - let’s look at how we can be more agile in smaller groups. The example to learn from?

Wolves. The Pack. Coordinated Hunting.

The call to arms? Form Your Own Pack. Form a Pack with me.

And that's really the ethos, the mission of Founders Pack.

Provide a vehicle whereby I can meet and help the next generation of Founders to achieve their great means. To have fun pursuing ventures that solve problems quickly and at scale. Powered by community and partnerships.

Help them, you, meet other founders who can contribute ideas, resources and tools to achieve each one’s mission. Take the best lessons of the Keiretsu and form something more nimble, adaptable and resourceful.

Collaborate in your pack and across packs.

To provide examples and raise a flag signaling a framework for founders, like you and I, to share

✅ Technology

✅ Talent

✅ Data; and

✅ Relationships

There is a common misunderstanding about wolves.

There is a thought that there is an alpha wolf that dominates a pack. A domineering, possibly toxic relationship with the rest of the pack.

That's not really true.

This misconception comes from the study of wolves in captivity. Observing caged animals desperate for limited resources.

The cage for wolves really is a prison of four walls they do not need. Do not thrive in. Governed by politics of scarcity.

Caging a wolf creates an unnatural observable dynamic.

Only born of circumstance when they are cut off from family and open access to territory, to resources. This is the only time you see an aggressive alpha emerge.

So what of the alpha?

In fact in the wild there are two alphas in a pack. A male and female alpha. A mom and a dad.

Parents who lead a pack of pups. Wolf packs are in fact — a family. 

A Pack is a family.

Like many of the most successful transformational ventures of the last 12-15 years, packs in the marketplace of the forest, the wild are led by co-founders. Like startups and ventures and projects need that pack leaders. The progenitors.

So that's why I suppose you see the most successful ventures are led by two alphas - usually a technical and business cofounder leading a pack of up and coming scrappy family members who bring their own cooperative and capable characteristics to the table.

The story of the pack is not competition within, but cooperation.

So as we face a potential era of divisiveness and a groaning bureaucracy seeking to control access to resources, I call upon you to change the world in the way you think makes sense.

Think for yourselves + Form Your Own Pack.

Join my Pack. Tell me about your mission and how I can help you create a world of packs, not politics. How can I and others cooperate with you to achieve your mission?

This is the idea behind Founders Pack.